Ongoing Series – Page 7 – Spectacle Theater

MARCH MIDNIGHTS

Posted on February 23, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, MARCH 1: MORON MOVIES

FRIDAY, MARCH 7: LET ME DIE A WOMAN
SATURDAY, MARCH 8: EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE

FRIDAY, MARCH 14: A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER
SATURDAY, MARCH 15: SLAYGROUND

FRIDAY, MARCH 21: THE BRUTE MAN
SATURDAY, MARCH 22: ORIGINAL SINS

FRIDAY, MARCH 28: GO DOWN DEATH
SATURDAY, MARCH 29: GO DOWN DEATH

Feeling left out? Can’t find common ground with your kids during those long, awkward dinners of meatloaf and self-loathing? Criminally unversed in the works of David A. Prior? Missing all those CANDY SNATCHERS references around the water cooler? Be honest, would you even be able to recognize an INTREPIDOS PUNK if you saw one?

Feeling woozy, it’s getting dark, this is the end…

NOT QUITE.

Spectacle Presents MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS (aka Turkish Netflix)! Fall in love for the first time or all over again with the best of Spectacle Midnights! Every month The Spectacle is showcasing one of our beloved midnight classics like ROCK N ROLL HOTEL, KILLER WORKOUT, HOLOGRAM MAN and so many MORE!!! Don’t yawn your way through another screening of Rocky Horror, half heartedly throwing rice and lip syncing through tears of boredom. Come get kicked in the chest by the AMERICAN HUNTER and lose a quart of blood to a BLOODSUCKER FROM OUTER SPACE!

You haven’t seen a Spectacle Midnight until you’ve seen it twice! Come Get Weird and Stay Weird at MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS!

MANDATORY MIDNIGHTS presents:
MORON MOVIES
Dir. Len Cella, 1985
USA, 58 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – MIDNIGHT

Sometime between “The Table’s Turned on the Gardener” and “The Hangover” came Len Cella’s MORON MOVIES. These really short films prefigure YouTube while recalling the gag films of early cinema. Originally shown on the Tonight Show and eventually on TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes, MORON MOVIES constitute an unparalleled cinematic joke book. Len Cella stars in his own micro masterworks (most clocking in under a minute) and imbues each with his own curmudgeonly outlook and grouchy charm. Crude, absurd, clever, brief, and absolutely hilarious — The Spectacle is proud to present the work of a great American humorist and filmmaker, Len Cella’s MORON MOVIES.

LET ME DIE A WOMAN
Dir. Doris Wishman, 1977
USA, 79 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – MIDNIGHT

Wishman’s sole foray into non-fiction is a disorienting, explicit, forward-thinking time capsule of sex-changes in the 70s. Combining interviews with noted surgeon Dr. Leo Wollman and his patients, soft porn dramatic re-enactments, and graphic surgery footage, LET ME DIE A WOMAN manages to be both exploitive and enlightening. Amidst its sleazy shocks and ramshackle sets, the subjects’ sincere desire to tell their story earns our genuine empathy. Like all of Wishman’s films, WOMAN is one of a kind, and must be seen to be believed.

Courtesy of Something Weird Video.

THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD
Dir. Everything is Terrible!, 2013
USA, 60 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 – MIDNIGHT

In our short time on this planet, Spectacle has played host to a veritable Who’s Who of Who On Earth? type guests – bodybuilding computer hackers, stop-motion royalty, literal Oscar winners, sonic gurus, political revolutionaries, etc. – and now, we can add one more to that list as we welcome the found footage titans of EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! for the New York premiere of their cut-and-paste sermon THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD!

Join us for an evening of deep spiritual reflection as we examine the apocalypse, eternal punishment, images of the divine in everything from snack food to slop buckets. EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! takes the wheel for an entire evening of guilt and death bed recanting.

See you in Hell.

Everything Is Terrible! is this world’s only psychedelic found footage comedy website that tours the earth with face-melting live shows that include puppets, Jerry Maguires stacked to the heavens, and adoring cloaked followers begging EIT! for more!

Find DVDs, the Daily Terrible, and more at everythingisterrible.com

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER
Dir. Doris Wishman, 1983
USA, 69 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – MIDNIGHT

It’s almost impossible to adequately explain the effect A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER has on the brain. Wishman had completed her first foray into 80s horror when the processing lab declared bankruptcy and a disgruntled employee destroyed most of the footage. Contractually bound to distributors, she finished the movie by any means necessary – using every frame of the remaining footage, re-writing the script, and shooting new scenes. What remains is a singular achievement in the history of motion pictures. It’s a non-stop, blood-soaked, nudity-packed assault on the senses, and like all great train wrecks, it’s impossible to look away.

SLAYGROUND
Dir. Terry Bedford, 1983
US/UK, 89 min.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15th – MIDNIGHT

Kinda-but-not-really adapted from a novel by noir hero Donald Westlake (alias Richard Stark), you can see three different movies cannibalistically clawing at each other in Terry Bedford’s Slayground : a gritty potboiler, a moody midlife relationship drama, and a slasher picture. After putting undue faith in an untested getaway driver who ends up flip-crashing into an Oldsmobile carrying an innocent young girl, Stone (Peter Coyote) flees the United States. But the victim’s industrial hockey magnate father calls up some dodgy underworld contacts, and soon the worst of the criminal worst are seeking retribution for her life. It doesn’t take long for Stone to realize he’s about three names down the list.

Stone successfully fakes his own death, but it makes no difference. As he hides out in the UK, the screenplay assumes Stone’s struggle to find the meagerest shred of an identity – any identity, let alone one worth preserving. The final showdown takes place at a derelict amusement park, where Stone’s estranged friend Terry (Mel Smith) leads him in the hopes that the men will be able to reconnect – but they’re not alone. Between the lines of dialogue conspicuously missing from the characters’ conversations – probably cut to make more room for car chases and murder scenes – and the intensity of its jerry-rigged brutality, Slayground adds up to a breathtaking monument to grotesquerie, hopelessness and nihilism. Like a giallo remake of Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street vomited through an old VCR, the film will linger in your mind late at night for its bookending, psychedelic-action set pieces.

THE BRUTE MAN
Dir. Jean Yarbrough, 1946
USA, 58 min.

FRIDAY, MARCH 21 – MIDNIGHT

Never has the callous disregard for human tragedy backfired so magnificently. Hired to play the eponymous lead character because of his grotesque facial deformities, star Rondo Hatton winds up delivering a subtle, soulful performance—the actor adding much shading and depth that was obviously not in the script compared to the rest of the movie.

Hatton is the only character who feels “real”—everyone else is a wiseacre (especially the cops), a stiff bourgeois suburbanite, a saint, or a damn fool. Meanwhile, like with all good serial killer flicks, The Brute Man stacks the deck against the victims: Never are they kind or decent people, but snooping and meddling jerks that deserve to get their necks snapped.

In this bleak (but fun) noir-horror mash-up, a series of brutal murders—with the victims’ spines crushed—has paralyzed a city with fear, and the police are clueless. They know the killer is ‘The Creeper’, but have no idea where the hideously ugly maniac could be. When the majority of victims are found to be old college pals, the authorities suspect someone from their past seeking revenge…

Like Tod Browning’s FREAKS or Michael Winner’s THE SENTINEL or some of Coffin Joe’s movies, 1946’s THE BRUTE MAN is sleazy and exploitative—in other words, wonderful—in how it uses genuine human deformity for our entertainment and sick fascination, if not our empathy and relief.

In this case, star Rondo Hatton (RIP, 1894-1946), whose infamous mug was courtesy of the disease acromegly (a pituitary gland disorder), had acting ability that was genuine, guileless and directly from the soul. His inner pain turns the tables, making the murderer the most sympathetic character in the film.

Hatton’s character’s authenticity is solidified by his ‘mad love’ for a blind chick he meets while hiding out in her apartment. His dialog with her is contradictory and obtuse, but the way it is delivered is exquisite: dopey scripting approaches the level of intricate Mamet inarticulateness, and the overall screenplay begins to feel as if Charles Bukowski had a hand in it, with Hatton’s merciless assassin coming off like a slightly more-homicidal/less-alcoholic Henry Chinaski, a lonely, ugly but sensitive slob/everyman (living below Skid Row!), at odds with the world and only wanting to be left alone—left alone so he can kill!

Meanwhile, the flick’s zero budget engenders an artlessness that becomes a strict formalism—a dream-like aspect increased by the relentless use of stock (or recycled) footage in a variety of neo-montages. And at only 58 minutes, man-oh-Manischewitz, does this picture move! Blink, and you’ll miss the ending!

The last film of Rondo Hatton’s long career, THE BRUTE MAN was originally produced by Universal, but unceremoniously dumped by the studio after the actor’s death. They were already under fire for ‘exploiting’ Hatton’s deformity, and didn’t want any more hassles.

Celebrate B-movie deity Rondo Hatton at the Spectacle at Midnight! Or else The Creeper might get you…

ORIGINAL SINS
Dir. Howard S. Berger & Matthew M. Howe, 1996
Italy/USA, 108 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22 – MIDNIGHT

HOSTED BY SCOOTER MCCRAE!

“What can I say about ORIGINAL SINS that will make you, dear potential viewer, realize that you NEED to see this insanely bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime cinematic festival of atrocious taste (graced with a magnificently dark sense of humor) made by talented moviemakers with ZERO sense of social responsibility? I’m loathe to get too specific with plot points as I’m not a spoiler-heavy kinda’ guy, but if you’ve ever wanted to see a movie where a trio of lovely religious ladies become naked sex slaves to a Jesus apparition, a crummy death metal band summon a furiously frivolous demon from Hell for reasons too stupid for me to type (did I mention that yours truly plays said demon?), and NOTHING is considered too sacred to be metaphorically ass-raped before your disbelieving and sin-drenched eyeballs (oh good lord, the comatose girl….!), then ORIGINAL SINS is the depraved no-holds-barred double-barreled blast of low-budget moviemaking FUCK YOU that you need to experience in a room full of people so you can just keep on repeating (to comfort your immortal soul before it thumps its way into the lowest portals of Hell) ‘it’s only a movie…. It’s only a movie…….!’

Still not enough for you? This fucking monstrosity was banned from video release in the U.K. for three consecutive years before it was finally released over there (with a little bit more than 6 minutes chopped out of it). And it damn near caused a riot at the FantaFestival in Rome back in 1994 after a chaotic sold out screening that led to a second screening needing to be added to appease the angry crowds. Was the Pope himself in attendance? I cannot be sure as I was not there myself, but since he’s long since dead I can only assume he was present (even if it finally took 11 years for John Paul II to pass on).

Released on video in the U.S. by Something Weird Video for a short window of time back in 1996, it quickly disappeared and has never been available here ever since. This rare screening will feature at least one of the two writer/directors in attendance (there’s a chance, schedule permitting, that they will both be attending), and I will be there as well to help answer whatever questions you might have about the whole sordid and wonderful production. If you’ve attended past events I’ve hosted at the Spectacle, you’ll know what to expect in terms of attitude, enjoyment and refreshments. Looking forward to seeing you there- if you dare!” -Scooter McCrae

GO DOWN DEATH
Dir. Aaron Schimberg, 2013
USA, 87 min.

ONE WEEK WORLD THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2014
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS

FRIDAY, MARCH 28 and SATURDAY, MARCH 29
10:00 PM (Filmmakers in attendance!) and MIDNIGHT (In SMELL-O-VISION!)

For its first–and only?–narrative feature run, Spectacle is pleased to present Aaron Schimberg’s staggering debut feature GO DOWN DEATH. Acclaimed as one of the most distinctive, visually stunning, and greatest undistributed films of the past year, it sits uneasily among rote indie festival programming. Naturally, we feel we make a great pair.

GO DOWN DEATH is a wry, sinister realization of a strange new universe, a cross-episodic melange of macabre folktales supposedly penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory Sinus. An abandoned warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stands in for a decrepit village haunted by ghosts, superstition, and disease, while threatening to buckle under rumblings of the apocalypse. Soldiers are lost and found in endless woods; a child gravedigger is menaced by a shape-shifting physician, a syphilitic john bares all to a young prostitute, and a disfigured outcast yearns for the affections of a tone-deaf cabaret singer. Highlighted by offbeat narrative construction, stunning black-and-white 16mm cinematography and immaculately detailed production design, GO DOWN DEATH is a distinctively original film informed by American Gothic, folk culture and outsider art.

Accompanying the weeklong run will be appearances by writer/director Aaron Schimberg, producer/editor Vanessa McDonnell, and other surprises and performances including a pair of live SMELL-O-VISION midnights concocted specially for Spectacle’s audiences.

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR GO DOWN DEATH

#1 Best Undistributed Film of 2013
– Christopher Bell, IndieWire’s The Playlist

“An astonishing, out-of-nowhere film. Amidst all the cookie-cutter indies, Aaron Schimberg’s GO DOWN DEATH casts a mysterious spell. A dreamy, highly stylized affair recalling early David Lynch. Highly recommended.”
– Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine

“A unique, strange, unforgettable film, a half-remembered dream that will trouble and beguile the subconscious long after you’ve moved on. (A-)”
– Gabe Toro, IndieWire’s The Playlist

“One of the best films of the year! An uncompromising feast of vision and atmosphere.”
– Kentucker Audley, NoBudge

“Robert Altman meets Tod Browning…an immaculate, offbeat triumph. Rarely do homespun independent filmmakers convey such a distinctly original vision.”
– Jon Dieringer, Screen Slate

“Irresistible! Evokes the great novels of William Faulkner, even as GO DOWN DEATH offers us a resolutely modern filmic experience. Schimberg appropriates the language of cinema and obeys only the rules he sets out for himself. The result is a thrilling leap into the unknown.”
– Simon Laperrière, Fantasia

“GO DOWN DEATH is as eccentric and daring as American indie cinema gets.”
– Matthew Campbell, Starz Denver

EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE presents: THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD

Posted on February 23, 2014July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD
Dir. Everything is Terrible!, 2013
USA, 60 min.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
SATURDAY, MARCH 8 – 10 PM & MIDNIGHT!

In our short time on this planet, Spectacle has played host to a veritable Who’s Who of Who On Earth? type guests – bodybuilding computer hackers, stop-motion royalty, literal Oscar winners, sonic gurus, political revolutionaries, etc. – and now, we can add one more to that list as we welcome the found footage titans of EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! for the New York premiere of their cut-and-paste sermon THE RISE AND FALL OF GOD!

Followed by a special EIT! Midnight Mass the likes of which you have never seen!

See you in Hell.

Find DVDs, the Daily Terrible, and more at everythingisterrible.com

FEMINIST HOLLYWOOD TAKEOVER

Posted on February 21, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

Feminist Hollywood Takeover is a series of shorts by female filmmakers who have deconstructed the predictable roles we tend so fondly remember when we think of old Hollywood films. Daringly, each film rebels against the tired archetypes of the mammy, tragic heroine, and hetero-glamourpuss comprising a joint rejection of oppressive stereotypes, and starring some of the most iconic Hollywood starlets to grace the silver screen.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 10:00 PM

LIP
Dir. Tracey Moffatt, Edited by Gary Hillberg, 1999
Australia, 10 min.

Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, takes aim at Hollywood’s portrayal of black women in a cheeky montage of (surprise) maids throughout film history. Moffatt recontextualizes your favorite actresses as pegs in a machine of oppressive stereotyping and bigotry, in this strangely hilarious short, which sheds a familiar yet refreshing light on #whitegirlproblems. With clips including a young Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and Patty Duke, among others, LIP is like a trip down memory lane with modern criticism instead of nostalgia.

THRILLER
Dir. Sally Potter, 1979
UK, 34 min.

Performance artist, experimental filmmaker, composer, dancer, and general badass Sally Potter eschews the typical Hollywood narrative with a deconstruction and rewriting of Puccini’s LA BOHEME. A staple of feminist film theory, THRILLER is one of Potter’s first international successes as a filmmaker in a career that includes such undertakings as ORLANDO and YES. In Potter’s version of Puccini’s legendary opera, Mimi, the tragic heroine who is supposed to die by the end of the opera, is granted the agency to question her own life story and the reasons behind her death. She juxtaposes her own role in the story with that of her female foil, Musetta, the “easy” woman, and challenges the idea that the “good” girl should always be youthful, weak and distressed.

MEETING OF TWO QUEENS
aka Encuentro entre dos reinas
Dir. Cecilia Barriga, 1991
Spain, 14 min.

Cecilia Barriga’s culty video montage tells the story of two queens who fall in love, unwittingly played by Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Clipped from their most iconic works, the Chilean born video artist manipulates scenes from the legendary actresses to turn two of the most well known Hollywood starlets in film history into a silent-film style lesbian fantasy. Barriga drives the narrative using common motifs such as the cigarette and the one-eyed glance from beneath a wide brimmed hat, motifs which are familiar to us, but recontextualized within a queer narrative. Major points for including a rainmaker in the soundtrack.

THREE FILMS BY KIM LONGINOTTO

Posted on February 18, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998
Iran/England, 80 min.
In Farsi with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

Hilarious, tragic, stirring – this fly-on-the-wall look at several weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate circumstances of Iranian women’s lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats her, Ziba, a 16-year-old trying to divorce her 38-year-old husband, and Maryam, who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan chronicle showcases the strength, ingenuity, and guile with which they confront biased laws, a Kafaka-esque administrative system, and their husbands’ and families’ rage to gain divorces.

With the barest of commentary, acclaimed director Kim Longinotto turns her cameras on the court for a subtle, fascinating look at women’s lives in a country which is little known to most Americans. Directed by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, author of MARRIAGE ON TRIAL: A STUDY OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW.

“A fascinating verite-style documentary that counters with compassion, humor, and a keen nose for spotting empathetic characters, strong-willed women, and dramatic moments, the traditional stereotypes of women in the Muslim world as passive victims.” – Hamid Naficy, Author, ‘The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles’

SHINJUKU BOYS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 1995
Japan/England, 53 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

From the makers of DREAM GIRLS, SHINJUKU BOYS introduces three onnabes who work as hosts at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. Onnabes are women who live as men and have girlfriends, although they don’t usually identify as lesbians. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all three talk frankly to the camera about their lives, revealing their views about women, sex, transvestitism and lesbianism. Alternating with these illuminating interviews are fabulous sequences shot inside the Club, patronized almost exclusively by heterosexual women. This is a remarkable documentary about the complexity of female sexuality in Japan today.

GAEA GIRLS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 2000
England/Japan, 106 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 10:00 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers who are just as violent as any member of the World Wrestling Federation. One recruit, Takeuchi, endures ritual humiliation not seen on screen since the boot camp sequences of FULL METAL JACKET.

“Longinotto and Williams’s ability to penetrate facades is remarkable. The filmmakers build their story in a way that’s more compelling and suspenseful than many narrative films.” – Chicago Film Festival

Film synopses courtesy of Women Make Movies!

AKERMANIA: THREE DOCUMENTARIES FROM CHANTAL AKERMAN

Posted on February 18, 2014December 19, 2019 by spectacletheater

These three documentaries by Chantal Akerman form a part of her loosely defined “directional” series; films with titles denoting direction and dealing with subjects of borders and displacement. This month, thanks to Icarus Films, we are excited to present the first three films of the series: FROM THE EAST (1993), SOUTH (1999) and FROM THE OTHER SIDE (2002).

Don’t wait for the next shot; the next shot will happen. – Chantal Akerman

FROM THE EAST
aka D’Est
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1993
France/Belgium, 110 min.

TUESDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM

Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and “before it was too late”, Chantal Akerman made a journey from East Germany in late summer, across Poland and the Baltics, to deepest winter in Moscow, “filming everything that touched me”. Tracking across city streets, landscapes, and faces, the film also takes us inside the private spaces of the countries’ inhabitants, where they peel potatoes, watch old TVs or stoically stare down the camera.

Akerman takes satisfaction in the demanding nature of her films. Most directors feel complimented, she has said, when viewers say they are not aware of passing time: “But with me, you see the time pass. And you feel it pass. You sense that this is time that leads towards death… I’ve taken two hours of [your] life.” – Film Comment

While taking a minimalist approach to its form, FROM THE EAST is rich in content, with fascinatingly culturally specific settings, music and images creating an entertainingly retro and unexpectedly moving experience.

SOUTH
aka Sud
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 1999
France/Belgium, 70 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 – 10:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 17 – 10:00 PM

Chantal Akerman originally planned to make a meditative film on the American South. On June 7th, 1998 in Jasper, Texas, only days before filming began, James Byrd, Jr., a black man aged 49 was brutally murdered by three white men. Byrd, after being severely beaten, was chained to the back of a pickup and dragged three miles down an asphalt road. What was left of his body was dumped in front of a black cemetery.

SOUTH is a quiet portrait of the town of Jasper and its residents. Rather than focusing on the aftermath of the killing on national politics or the murderers themselves, Akerman centers on the environment of Jasper and the people affected by Byrd’s death. Akerman was allowed to film Byrd’s funeral and the ceremony is a considerable segment of the film.

Akerman writes, “How does the southern silence become so heavy and so menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment evoke so intensely death, blood, and the weight of history? How does the present call up the past? And how does this past, with a mere gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?”

SOUTH is constructed of static shots and long pans along country roads interspersed with interviews with townspeople. The structure of the interviews feel somewhat naïve if one were to focus more acutely on the politics of the racially motivated murder. Through what could have been a lack of probing, the interviewees talk uncomfortably around issues, and Akermans’ concern with not interfering obstructs deeper analysis.

Nonetheless, Akerman is a tourist and an outsider, and she seems aware of this. SOUTH could be considered a contribution to a cinema, including Alain Resnais’ fictional HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR or Alexander Kluge’s BRUTALITY IN STONE, that attempts to recognize human suffering while being critical of its representation. Though, as a documentary, the film raises slightly different questions. Is it possible in documentary to construct representations of someone’s pain, and if so, is this ethical?

FROM THE OTHER SIDE
aka De l’autre côté
Dir. Chantal Akerman, 2002
France/Belgium/Australia/Finland, 99 min.
In English, Spanish and French with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 5:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 17 – 7:30 PM

FROM THE OTHER SIDE looks at the situation of Mexican immigrants at the border between Agua Prieta, a Mexican border town in the state of Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, the city on the other side. The first half of the film is set in Mexico. Between static and tracking shots of desert landscapes and the border wall, Akerman interviews people who plan to or have attempted to cross the desert into the US, including a young boy in an orphanage. She quietly interviews an older couple whose son died in the desert when his group lost their way.

Similar in structure to her earlier film SOUTH, and stylistically reminiscent to FROM THE EAST, FROM THE OTHER SIDE feels perhaps the most active. By physically crossing the border and filming on both sides, we experience Akerman’s and our own ease of travel between, as well as witness the shift into the militaristic and racially skewed reality existing in Douglas, Arizona. While in Douglas, Akerman interviews a Mexican consulate, the sheriff and paranoid white locals.

Through Akermans’ signature steady gaze, she “insists” – we have no choice but to look, think, settle into the image, and to let the image settle in; in a way the length of the shots summon respect for the person on the screen. In one scene, per his request, a man reads a pained statement among his traveling companions in a cafeteria. He tells us why his group is migrating and what the journey has been like for them. Akerman says, “You have to be really like a sponge when you make a documentary.” FROM THE OTHER SIDE urges the viewer to be porous.

NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN

Posted on February 18, 2014July 23, 2015 by spectacletheater

NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN
Dir. Martina Kudláček, 2006
USA, 97 min.

Screening with ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (Marie Menken, 1961, 5 min.)

MONDAY, MARCH 3 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 16 – 5:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Icarus Films.

Martina Kudlácek, director of the critically acclaimed IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN brings us the story of Marie Menken (1909-1970), one of New York’s outstanding underground filmmakers, who inspired and worked with renowned artists Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger and Gerard Malanga, and became known as “the mother of the avant-garde.”

Originally an abstract painter and collage artist, Menken produced nearly two dozen experimental shorts, gracefully using a hand-held Bolex camera to create rhythmic patterns of light, color, form and texture, and compose exquisite visual poems. Rich in excerpts of Menken’s work, the film also features the rare and fascinating footage of “The Duel of the Bolexes” she conducted with Andy Warhol on a New York rooftop.

The large, loud and tempestuous Menken, whose volatile relationship with husband Willard Maas reportedly inspired Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, became a Warhol superstar making memorable appearances in THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO and THE CHELSEA GIRLS.

Featuring interviews with Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Gerard Malanga, Peter Kubelka, Alfred Leslie, Billy Name, and THE CHELSEA GIRLS star Mary Woronov, and music by John Zorn.

Text courtesy of Icarus Films.

KINETIC CINEMA: A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH NEL SHELBY

Posted on February 17, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

KINETIC CINEMA: A SCREENING AND DISCUSSION WITH NEL SHELBY
Dir. Nel Shelby, Various years
USA, ca. 90 min.

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
THURSDAY, MARCH 13 – 8:00 PM

Pentacle is pleased to invite Nel Shelby, an extraordinarily talented dance videographer, to present an evening of films and videos that have inspired her illustrious career in dance and video.

Nel writes: “When I double-majored in dance and broadcast video, I had no idea where it would lead. Now, when I sit in a dark theater watching dance, trying to type as many notes as possible into my iPhone, I pinch myself and wonder if there’s any place I’d rather be. (The answer is NO!) Whenever I walk into a theater, it feels like home. Whether it’s midtown Manhattan, Vail, Colorado, or Becket, Massachusetts, each and every day I am inspired by the work that I do. More than anything, I want artists to have beautiful video to showcase their work so they can book more performances and keep sharing what they do best.”

Nel Shelby, Founder and Principal of Nel Shelby Productions, is deeply dedicated to the preservation and promotion of dance through documentation of live performances, fully edited marketing reels, live-stream capture, and documentaries and films that encapsulate the essence of nonprofit organizations.

Her New York City-based video production company has grown to encompass a diverse list of dance clients including American Ballet Theater II, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Gallim Dance, Gotham Arts, Kate Weare and Company, Keigwin + Company, Monica Bill Barnes Company, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Wendy Whelan and many more. She has filmed performances at venues throughout the greater New York area including The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, St. Mark’s Church and Judson Church, to name a few.

For the past eight years, Nel has served as Festival Videographer for the internationally celebrated Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires. Each season at the Pillow, Nel’s responsibilities include documenting aspects of festival culture in addition to its 20 mainstage dance performances, filming and overseeing documentation of more than 100 free performances and events, managing two dance videography interns and an apprentice, and educating students about the technical and philosophical aspects of filming dance.

She now also serves as Resident Videographer at the Vail International Dance Festival where she spent her first summer creating five short dance documentary films about the festival in addition to documenting its events and performances. Her longer-form, half-hour documentary on Vail’s festival, THE ALTITUDE OF DANCE, debuted on Rocky Mountain PBS in May 2013.

This year, she is creating four short films for Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature. In 2012, she collaborated with Adam Barruch Dance to create a short film titled FOLIE A DEUX, which was selected and screened at the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Nel’s videos for the New Jersey Hall of Fame were shown to an audience of 2000 people, and she is currently editing a dance documentary featuring Nejla Y. Yatkin that she filmed for three-and-a-half weeks in Central America in 2010. Nel has a long personal history with movement – she has a B.A. in dance and is a certified Pilates instructor. She continues to train with world-renowned Master Teachers Romana Krysnowska and Sari Pace, original students of Joseph Pilates. In addition to her dance degree, Nel holds a B.S. in broadcast video. She often collaborates with her wonderful husband, dance photographer Christopher Duggan on creative projects with dancers in New York City and beyond. They live with their beautiful daughter Gracie in Manhattan.

Kinetic Cinema, is a regular screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective: Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit our website and our blog, movetheframe.com.

About Pentacle’s Movement Media

Pentacle’s Movement Media provides services, strategies, and opportunities for dance artists to make dance works for screen and use media to promote and enhance their artistic pursuits. The core activities of Movement Media are screenings, consulting services, workshops, and interactive media publications (blogs, social networking, online videos, etc). These services address a growing need for dance artists to engage with Media, particularly online and on new media platforms, in order to reach audiences, grow artistically, and stay relevant in today’s media-rich world.

Pentacle’s Movement Media programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. KINETIC CINEMA is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The 2014 season of Kinetic Cinema is made possible through the contributions of generous individuals like you.

FEBRUARY MIDNIGHTS

Posted on January 25, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

LASER MISSION
Dir. BJ Davis, 1989
USA, 84 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – MIDNIGHT

On Saturday February 1st at MIDNIGHT, we are celebrating what would have been the 49th birthday of BRANDON LEE. Who is that, you ask? You’re reading this on a computer, right?

Before he was THE CROW (but definitely after his LEGACY OF RAGE), Lee was Michael Gold – a cocky, self-righteous asshole who upends his fully free agent status and chooses to accept a LASER MISSION on offer from the CIA (but, like, eschewing CASH MONEY USA in favor of action man SWAGGER ethics). There’s something about the WORLD’S LARGEST DIAMOND gone missing, along with some LASER expert (expertly lazied by ERNEST BORGNINE) being held in Angola (or somewhere) by the KGB (or Cuban military or some Austrian madman or something). All this adds up to is TROUBLE and the potential END of the WESTERN WORLD as we KNOW IT. When not donning gross disguises to fool bumbling cartoon humans, Gold is totes in NEGGING WAR III with terminal television episoder DEBI MONAHAN (who may or may not be portraying a daughter or a double agent or whatever).

Even if you HAVE seen LASER MISSION, you won’t want to MISS our special WIDESCREEN presentation, with all the EXPLOSIVE action (and sometimes admittedly great wide tracking shots) as NEVER BEFORE SEEN in domestic US BARGAIN BINS and FIFTY-FILM DVD collections. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get our hands on the legendary FULLY UNCUT version on GERMAN VHS, but if you come by SATURDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, maybe we’ll SHOW you some STILLS AND talk you THROUGH THE cuts.

If you HAVEN’T seen LASER MISSION, then grab your favorite brand of adult diapers and head the hell over here. Sounds appealing? Then make like an ORANGE and GET JUICED.

ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB PRESENTS
PIZZA
Karthik Subbaraj, 2012
India, 127 min.
In Tamil with poor yet remarkably effective English subtitles

Artifact Video Club is conceptually premised upon screening international bootlegs of popular cinema. See end of description for notes on quality.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – MIDNIGHT

What is two hours long and kicks ass? PIZZA.

You have never seen a movie like PIZZA. This charming and offbeat Kollywood romantic horror comedy thriller is sort of like a mix between Edgar Wright, Luis Buñuel, Henri George Clouzot, Nora Ephron, and pizza. It’s about a guy who delivers pizza and is compelled to marry his live-in girlfriend, an aspiring horror novelist, following an unexpected pregnancy. But after the protagonist suddenly finds himself participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter, really weird stuff — like, weirder than randomly participating in the exorcism of his boss’s daughter — starts to happen.. Forty minutes in, PIZZA ruptures into an extended, hallucinatory, and terrifying horror film sonata before taking another left turn or two through mystery and thriller genres and delivering a hot, satisfying conclusion. It leaves one feeling really, stupidly great. Movies really don’t get as sweet, terrifying, strange, smart, and funny as PIZZA.

Audiences agreed. PIZZA was a huge critical and commercial success in Tamil cinemas and has already been remade in Kannada, Bengali and Hindi, dubbed into Telugu, and followed up with a generally unrelated sequel, PIZZA II: VILLA, in which the title food, pizza, appears to play an even more tangential or perhaps even non-existent role.

Anyway, as with life itself: Kollywood cinema simply does not get better than PIZZA.

This is the second screening of Spectacle’s unauthorized contemporary international pop cinema bootleg midnight screening series ARTIFACT VIDEO CLUB. Nodding to our international colleagues running Ghana movie clubs and VCD videotheques, AVC is an intrepid exploration of vernacular cinema from around the globe. Intentionally half-baked in concept and execution, AVC dwells in the ether between armchair anthropology, misapplied critical theory, and superfried midnight madness.

Please be advised that PIZZA will be served with piracy-prevention watermarks and superimposed anti-smoking warnings that appear every time anyone smokes a cigarette. Which is a lot, ‘cause delivering pizzas is stressful!!!

SAMURAI REINCARNATION (Makai tenshô)
Dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1981
Japan, 121 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – MIDNIGHT

“I don’t want a sword that can only kill human beings. I want to kill devils.”
Director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale, Graveyard of Honor) teams up with his old pal Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter series) facing off against Kenji Sawada (The Happiness of the Katakuris) for all the supernatural swordfighting you can handle in Samurai Reincarnation. After the defeat and massacre of his troops, a general renounces God and sells his soul for the ability to bring the dead back to life, building an undead army. Meanwhile, swordsman Yagyu Jubei seeks an evil sword able not only to kill people but demons as well. From here, there’s swordfights aplenty (no surprise this film was the inspiration for the video game Samurai Showdown), crazy effects, jaw-dropping award-winning art direction and more of everything — those expecting a staid Edo-era period piece might not like it, but any cold-as-ice Chiba fan will be delighted. There’s even an unhealthy dollop of nudity and Roman porno-style sexual depravity for the midnight trenchcoat crew! Keep an eye out for a small role by Tomisaburo Wakayama (Lone Wolf & Cub)!

VASE DE NOCES
(aka Wedding Trough, aka The Pig Fucking Movie)
Dir. Thierry Zéno, 1974
Belgium, 79 min.

Special thanks to Thierry Zéno

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH – MIDNIGHT

40TH ANNIVERSARY! • FIRST US SCREENING IN 20+ YEARS!

[TRIGGER WARNING: Contains simulated scenes of animal cruelty, animal killings, bestiality, defecation, coprophagia, and unsimulated scenes of vomiting and live animal birth.]

A nightmarish, haunting dirge with an often-maligned reputation, VASE DE NCOES is a notorious 1974 film concerning a lone farmer’s sexual relations with his favorite sow. And while the subject matter is shocking, it’s certainly not in the name of exploitation. In fact, there’s a fair amount going on for a film infamously bestowed the US title of ‘The Pig Fucking Movie’…

Set in a post-apocalypse rural farm, the unnamed man tends to his daily activities, before eventually fixing his eye on a large sqealing pig. A few fantasies later, the farmer finds himself alone with his love interest and they copulate, with the pig eventually giving birth to three piglets. When he takes an invested interest in raising them, the piglets try to rejoin their mother, setting off a chain of events that push the film into darker and more phantasmagorical territories…

Completely devoid of dialogue, fermented in Year Zero bleakness, shot in monochromatic black-and white and featuring a raucous sound design of Gregorian chants, early electronic synthesizers, and animal wailings of all kinds, the film feels beamed from another plane of existence. Indeed, its comparisons to Eraserhead are justified in the technical and aesthetics departments, though interestingly it was released two years prior to David Lynch’s debut.

The last exit on the fringe film highway, VASE DE NOCES is a film more whispered about than actually seen, chiefly due to its extremely limited screenings since its initial festival run (which included Cannes and New Directors/New Films, amongst others). Finally, in 2009, German distributor Camera Obscura granted the film its first-ever official release and a new restoration, though the film is still not commercially available in the US. Working with director Thierry Zéno, Spectacle is proud to present the new restored digital version of this legendary arthouse oddity on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.

“Both obscene and spiritual… not for the squeamish.” -MoMA

“A journey to the end of the night… a mystical allegory… continuously fascinating, continuously disquieting.” -Film Comment

“This bizarre, hypnotic, humorless tale of a demented farm boy and his four-legged barnyard sweetheart may be the ultimate in solipsistic filmmaking. Whatever one’s reaction to it… it cannot be passed of as a mere piece of cinematic sensationalism… a combination of grand-guignol, theatre-of-cruelty and demonic mysticism…” -Buck Henry

ANIMAL PROTECTOR
Dir. Mats Helge, 1988
Sweden/USA, 96 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – MIDNIGHT

Like Spectacle after-dark idols Godfrey Ho (HARD BASTARD) and Arizal (AMERICAN HUNTER), Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge singlehandedly helmed dozens of cornea-crushing Z-grade action pictures in the 70s and 80s, only a fistful of which are accounted for today. Perhaps second-famous after his much-whispered-about THE NINJA MISSION, ANIMAL PROTECTOR sees Helge standing at the cynosure of 80s late-night movie financing. Shooting in and around a Scottish castle, Helge’s camera betrays a magnetic pull towards David Carradine’s demented hardass Colonel Whitlock. Lording over an operation guarded by special ops, infantrymen and non-American Green Berets, Whitlock is no mere animal-experimenting megavillain but a damn Reagan-era Doctor Moreau.

For a time, Helge’s bleak vision is like watching a powerful Bond villain with no comeuppance anywhere near to the horizon. But justice does indeed touch down at Whitlock’s doorsteeple in the hands of C.I.A. agent Santino (A.R. Hellquist), plus a bevy of uzi-gun toting blondes in shredded jeans and camo. Impassioned to free Whitlock’s mammalian victims (if without an escape plan beyond the island), the crew chews up scores of foot soldiers and flunkies before running smack into its greatest obstacle: Whitlock. Carradine the order-barker suddenly morphs into Carradine the wild man of kung fu, exploding out of the castle and onto the beach. There, Santino’s mission vanishes into the sunrise in a one-on-one deathmatch that can only define both men as animal.

ROAR
Dir. Noel Marshall, 1981
USA, 102 min.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – MIDNIGHT

Made over the course of 10 years and with a reported 70 crew injuries – most notably a tiger mauling that resulted in what was perhaps Melanie Griffith’s first (and certainly not last) plastic surgery — ROAR emerges in hindsight as one of history’s most expensive home movies, a Hollywood albatross never released theatrically in the US.

Tippi Hedrin (THE BIRDS) and husband/producer Noel Marshall were at the time noted animal rights activists with a menagerie of cheetahs and tigers kept in waiting at their Acton, California ranch, “The Shambala Preserve”. They doubled the Golden State location as exotic Africa and cast themselves as an animal researcher and estranged wife, respectively, who reconnect against a backdrop of escaped tigers and evil game hunters, pouring $17 million dollars into a still-unrecovered black hole in the process.

But of course none of that counts in a film where Tippi Hedrin gets flipped upside down by an elephant en route to a would-be heartwarmer of an ending that lands closer to perverse surrealism. The notorious production had trouble corralling its fauna, and it shows all over: everything and everyone is out of control here. Perhaps most important is that however dunderheaded it may be, ROAR is exactly what it purports to be: a naïve safari picture in the tradition of Trader Horn and Hatari! whose raw encounter with the animal species triumphs over narrative, ethical, and – yes, hygienic – concerns.

NUKING OZ AT MIDNIGHT: SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM & OTHER SICK HUMOR VISIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE IN AUSTRALIA

SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM
Dir. Ray Boseley, 1988
Australia, 48 min.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – MIDNIGHT

With:
DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOLCALYPSE
Dir. Nathaniel Lindsay, 2009
Australia, 8:26 min.

I LOVE SARAH JANE
Dir. Spencer Susser, 2007
Australia, 14 min.

SPIDER
Dir. Nash Edgerton, 2007
Australia, 9 min.

From ON THE BEACH to THE ROAD WARROR to TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, Australia has figured prominently in cinematic depictions of the events surrounding total war, including the use of thermonuclear weapons.

Maybe it’s something to do with the “Convict Stain,” but Oz has also found itself to be ground zero for some of the more twisted takes on atomic destructions (if not physical, then spiritual). Not quite bummers from Down Under, these shorts view The End of Civilization, whether overtly or not, with a bleak, black humor—this evening, the Spectacle presents two atomic war perspectives, one zombie apocalypse, and one relationship apocalypse, because sometimes a breakup really feels like the end of the world.

“So what are we going to do? Take it easy and conserve our strength, or are we gonna run ourselves ragged?!?”, demands party-thrower Jon (Rob Howard) in his well-stocked bomb shelter in Ray Boseley’s marvelous SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM (at 48 minutes, a sort of cinematic novella). The bombs have dropped, the land is scorched, and the heavy radiation is penetrating the bunker, dooming everyone.

At the shelter, all who survived are invited to knock back a few, chow down, and puff a bong. “This is a casual affair: Come as you are, smoke ’em if ya got ’em,” he says.

Released and highly praised by Chris Gore’s Film Threat in 1988, SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM was promptly lost and forgotten. Snappy and stylish, wearing its Aussie Punk Rock heritage on its sleeve (the singer in the film’s band has that Birthday Party look about him), it’s the best soiree you could ever be invited to—lots of good food, great booze and drugs, wanton sex—it’s just too bad the End of the World is happening.

Made in the Reagan-Bush Era when nuclear war was expected at any moment—Whew! Sure glad those days are over — SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM is infused with pitch-black, yet often dry or absurdist humor, which, as Slow Radiation Death creeps upon the characters, becomes philosophical, bittersweet and even sentimental sometimes.

Joining SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM are three additional short films, all of which are sick, sick, sick.

Nash Edgerton (director of 2008’s acclaimed THE SQUARE) helms the first short of the program: SPIDER (2007), where a hapless, immature prankster might as well be dropping an atomic weapon into his love life.

The Zombie Apocalypse makes its way Down Under in Spencer Susser’s I LOVE SARAH JANE (2007), but not even that can stop the serious crush young Jimbo has on classmate Sarah Jane (current “It Girl” Mia Wasikowska in a very early role) in this DAWN OF THE DEAD/LORD OF THE FLIES mash-up.

Early-1980s public safety films are expertly spoofed in Nathaniel Lindsay’s animated DUCKED & COVERED: A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE POST APOCALYPSE (2009) in this evening’s penultimate short. Now you will know what to do when the killer robots show up, or if you have too many skulls lying around.

KINETIC CINEMA: STORY, POEM, METAPHOR: THE DANCE FILMS OF GABRIELLE LANSNER

Posted on January 16, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

STORY, POEM, METAPHOR: THE DANCE FILMS OF GABRIELLE LANSNER
Dir. Gabrielle Lansner
USA, ca. 90 minutes

THURSDAY, MAY 8 – 7:30 PM
Gabrielle Lansner in attendance!

Choreographer and filmmaker Gabrielle Lansner will screen her emotionally charged and story driven dance films. Coming from a dance/theater background, Gabrielle will discuss her creative process and the challenges she encountered in developing works for the camera that live somewhere between story, poem and metaphor. She will screen, DAD, wishing…, and THE STRONGER which have toured to Festivals in the U.S. and internationally, excerpts of early projects that served as drafts for completed films, and SET BREAKS, from 1980.

Gabrielle Lansner is a critically acclaimed choreographer, award winning filmmaker and artistic director of gabrielle lansner & company. Since 1997, she has been exploring the intersection of dance, film and theater. Her innovative dance/theater works have been presented at The Duke on 42nd Street, HERE, River to River Festival, The Peter Jay Sharpe Theater, among others. Most recently Gabrielle has been exploring the medium of film as another form of artistic expression. Her three short films have screened and received awards both in the U.S. and Internationally.

ABOUT KINETIC CINEMA

Kinetic Cinema is a regular screening series of Pentacle’s Movement Media curated by invited guest artists who create evenings of films and videos that have been influential to their own work as artists. When artists are asked to reflect upon how the use of movement in film and media arts has influenced their own art, a plethora of new ideas, material, and avenues of exploration emerge. From cutting edge motion capture animation to Michael Jackson music videos, from Gene Kelly musicals to Kenneth Anger films, Kinetic Cinema is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation for “moving” pictures. We have presented these evenings at Collective:Unconscious, Chez Bushwick, IRT, Launchpad, Green Space, Uniondocs, CRS, 3rd Ward, Fort Useless and The Tank in New York City, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

For more info on the current Kinetic Cinema season please visit our website and our blog, movetheframe.com.

KINETIC CINEMA is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Pentacle’s Movement Media programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

BEST OF SPECTACLE: EPHEMERALL™

Posted on January 1, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

EPHEMERALL™
Dir. Various, 1930s-1970s.
USA, 60 min.

MONDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30 – 10:00 PM

Please consult with your doctor or another qualified health care professional before starting EPHEMERALL™.

EPHEMERALL™ from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

Bleeding our end-of-year BEST OF SPECTACLE tradition into the first month of the New Year is a summary of Spectacle’s 2013 EPHEMERA nights into one single, hour-long program: EPHEMERALL™.

No outlet served post-war American culture’s ebullient pride and prosperity better than that of the now-infamous educational film. Today these didactic artifacts are relegated to sideshow status by the likes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Weird Al, MST3K and Adult Swim, all of whom freely lampoon these easy targets for their comically dated sensibilities.

Last year’s monthly EPHEMERA program aimed to present these documents to a contemporary audience in perhaps a more even light, ideally free from the ironic framing that can easily overwhelm some of their more interesting details.

EPHEMERALL™ is a the entirety of these values, advice, commodities and information, all neatly compressed into one ultra-convenient dose. In the course a single sitting, an entire century of knowledge and wisdom will be yours.

Sources for EPMEHERALL™ include brief portions of nearly every clip from each of 2013’s 8 EPHEMERA programs:
-March: THE PRELINGER ARCHIVES
-April: FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIAL GUIDANCE
-May: WHAT WAS NEW YORK?
-June: ACT NATURAL
-July: SEX, THE PREDATOR, AND YOU
-August: PSYCHOLOGY AND CONCERN
-September: POPULUXE
-October: SAFETY FIRST!

Special thanks to the Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger and everyone at the Prelinger Archive.

Rick Prelinger began collecting “ephemeral films”—all those educational, industrial, amateur, advertising, or otherwise sponsored—in 1982, amassing over 60,000 (all on physical film) before his Prelinger Archive was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since then, the collection has grown and diversified: now it exists in library form in San Francisco and is also gradually being ported online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where 6,074 of its films are currently hosted (as of this writing).

Of course, the content of the Prelinger Archive’s films varies in accord with the variety of mankind. Historic newsreels, mid-century automobile infomercials, psychological experiments, medical procedurals, big oil advertisements, military recruitment videos, political propagandas, personal home videos, celebrity exposes, amateur narratives, scientific studies, war bulletins, instructional films, special interest op-eds, safety lessons, hobby guides, travel destination profiles and private industry productions all sit comfortably together in one marginalized category.